Humour in uniform

These are strange times indeed. Once again, life is imitating literature in such an emphatic and compelling manner in this hellish corner of the globe. Fiction writers may soon become surplus to requirement. As the mother of all electoral wars drags itself towards a definitive climax, strange creatures are crawling out of the woodwork even as extraterrestrial figures invade the Nigerian firmament.

By the way, does anybody remember the famous classic by Robert Louis Stevenson titled The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde? It reads like a compelling medical bulletin on bipolar disorder. During the day Dr Jekyll is a respectable medical practitioner. But at night, he is transformed into a ferocious monster furiously hacking to death women of easy virtues in the Red Light district.

Has anybody noticed that shortly after this column characterized his government as a civilian junta, i.e a civilian government with military strongmen in the background conducting the orchestra, Goodluck Jonathan himself upped the ante by swapping his customary fedora-capped resource control costume with the full military fatigues of a Commander in Chief, swagger stick to match in a surprise and brave visit to the Boko Haram front?

If you are in any doubt about this dramatic transformation of Jonah to the great Attila, just hear it from the old warhorse’s mouth. According to Edwin Clark: by going to Baga, Jonathan has shown the stuff of great generals. All hail the Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces, General Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.

It was obviously part of an elaborate military bluff and psychological offensive against the dreaded sect. Not even Jonathan’s worst detractors can begrudge him this one. He looked every inch the part of a civilian general, a violent oxymoron to be sure, but a political possibility in the post-colony. A lot of drilling and grilling must have gone into this military education of the presidential cadet, including gait correction, physique stiffening and the science of martial bearing.

Yet as many theorists of semiotics and scholars of symbolic perception and impression management would attest, this type of image conjuring can work both ways. While the image of a virile and potent leader may serve to reassure a people dazed and traumatized by war and senseless carnage, while the impression of strength and defiance may destabilize the Boko Haram enemy, the same image may send a wrong and even contrary message of intimidation and coercion to a seething democratic citizenry on the verge of a make or mar election.

It will be recalled that on the eve of the infamous 2007 election which he himself famously dubbed a “do or die” affair, General Olusegun Obasanjo even more famously donned the full ceremonial uniform of the Commander in Chief of the Nigerian Armed Forces replete with the dark goggles of a Latin American caudillo. Needless to add that it was a prelude to the worst electoral pogrom in the history of the country.

There are many things that are disturbing and unsettling about the strange overnight transformation of Goodluck Jonathan from a meek, gentle and inoffensive pacifist to a furiously belligerent commander in chief. If he had the fire in him all along, why wait till now when a vast swathe of the country whose territorial integrity he swore to protect lies in ruins, completely devastated by the Boho Haram tempest?

Why wait until now to show the fire in his belly, the swash in his buckle and the rattle in his sabre? Could this temporizing be part of an elaborate strategic plot to render a substantial portion of the north militarily, politically and economically hors de combat so as to be in a position to pose as liberators later? If so, it will amount to a particularly cynical and cruel ploy to reap electoral dividends from the misery and devastation of the North Eastern people of Nigeria.

Whatever it is, it is certainly curious that a hitherto combat-shy commader who had exhibited no appetite for confrontation or aptitude for hostilities could suddenly hop on the plane to visit war ravaged areas and inspect damaged facilities. It will be recalled that for months, despite intense pressures and muted grumblings, Dr Goodluck refused to visit the war affected areas or Chibok, the town where almost three hundred students of a Secondary School were abducted almost a year ago. Suddenly, General Jonathan took over, and the rest is recent history.

The plot thickens and the mystery deepens when it is realized that it is the same Nigerian army which has been a subject of international ridicule and global contempt for its seeming ineptitude and sheer incompetence on the battlefield that has suddenly rediscovered its old fighting flair a tad late in the day. Was the army slandering itself all along by affecting incompetence, or were the troops trying to prove a point?

Whatever the case may be, the ease and resolve with which the Nigeria military has been relentlessly rolling back the Boko Haram was not the surprise but the fact that so much of Nigerian nation space had already come under the suzerainty of the dreaded sect. This has led to a new military maxim worthy of Baron von Clausewitz: If you don’t recapture, you never know how much has been captured.

But if you think you are close to unraveling this strange tale of how an institution and its chief commander can experience a cyclothymic swing of moods between extreme placidity and sudden ferocity, you are surely mistaken. It will be recalled that the Chadian military Command once accused our army of loss of fighting appetite, to put it rather diplomatically. This past week, the same Chadian army openly accused their Nigerian counterparts of stalling and stonewalling in a final vicious push to rout the Boko Haram insurgents.

At least, the Chadian army has shown an internal logic and consistency underpinning its operations and reputation for brutal severity. In a statement obliquely directed at this charge, the Nigerian Commander in Chief stated that the military was being careful so as to avoid heavy civilian collateral damage. Is this a new version of what General Gowon famously referred to as “police action” in the first three months of the civil war before the Biafrans almost arrived at the gates of Dodan Barracks?

You would have thought that at this perilous stage the military would throw everything to rout a Boko Haram that has its back to the wall. The latest argument from the Nigerian military authorities is that the Boko Haram sect is using the abducted Chibok girls as a shield. But it is obvious that this cuts no ice with the Chadian army which has given the sect a surrender ultimatum failing which it would be pounded into annihilation. Actually, the Chibok shield bogey is a no-brainer dredged up from the past.

By slowing down the offensive, could it be that somebody somewhere does not want to run out of the major joker for further postponing the elections? In a war situation, the postponement of elections is the election of postponement. Postponement is chosen for the people. It is a form of annulment which is more lethal and sophisticated than the original.

Meanwhile, and while this sudden lull in the prosecution of the real war is going on, a saturation bombardment and carpet bombing of enemy political territory, the like of which has never been seen or heard of in this country and whose sheer savagery will make the authors of the Geneva convention wince in trepidation, has been unleashed on the opposition. Have we finally arrived at the dreaded conjuncture when anything, including national cohesion and the military fortunes of the nation in an actual war, can be thrown into an electoral contest without caring a hoot or giving a damn?

When the outcome of an electoral war supersedes the outcome of an actual war, a nation can be said to have entered the realm of political schizophrenia. It is all about the spoils of power, stupid, and the country is split down the middle in a way that may suborn national will and identity. It is a fearful situation. May God help the English patient pretending to be Nigeria in the next few weeks.

Snooper, for a historian of such insight, your lack of knowledge about the military, given its role in the shaping of history, is remarkable. The NA has simply blasted Boko Haram out of the reckoning. They have received Tanks and attack Helicopters and so the contest has become what it was supposed to be all along. A cudgelling. Of the weaker by the more powerful; not superior strategy, not a new found valour, simply raw firepower. By the way, one senses a new despondency in Snooper’s tone. Well, take heart. If nothing else , the Buhari challenge has shaken the Otuoke man out of his lethargy.

absam777

Which Nigerian Army are you talking about? Definitely not the one led by Jonathan as the C-in-C. NA is being helped by foreign army, albeit from small neighboring countries. How is that for a nation’s pride?

Newsgate

We at the receiving end, we are not impressed with the Otuoke General. Our fate is first, in the hands of God & then of the APC. Nobody should come 4 electoral gimmicks after our tears, sorrow & blood(apologies-FELA). Snooper got it right as he christened his essay- humour in uniform. Long after BH, many lovers of literature will write volumes on the episode- especially the overnight transformation of the meek, gentle, OTUOKE General.